


Blindspot

by reconditarmonia



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Canon Era, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-06
Updated: 2013-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-23 21:14:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/626581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reconditarmonia/pseuds/reconditarmonia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marius never thought he'd be the only one to live.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blindspot

Looking back, he is not sure how it never occurred to him.

Not having participated in the barricades of 1830 nor attended the meetings at Café Musain, still Marius had some idea of the work done by the Society of the Friends of the ABC to midwife the birth of a republic: Courfeyrac rising early to meet with a leader of the Society of Egalitarian Workers before the day began, Jean Prouvaire marking a printer's proof in Corinthe, Bossuet bleary-eyed over supper as a sleepless night inventorying powder and bullet-molds made itself felt. This group, of which he was a satellite, was composed of students of all kinds, but had as its textbook the map and muster of July.

Neither he nor they were so naïve as to dismiss the possibility that any one of them should fall; he reminds himself of this now. They were proud to die should France demand it of them. Nor is it defeat which robs this fact of consolation. Marius imagines, for a moment, the republic, brought into being at the cost of all their lives -- and cannot do it. There is Enjolras, writing an article on recommendations for a new constitution; or Combeferre, who will never forget a social obstacle when a political one is obliterated, fighting for the emancipation of women. He forces himself to picture their graves (he does not know, he realizes, if they have them now), but cannot picture himself alone at any one: he reads _TOUT APPARTIENT À L'AVENIR_ , or a quatrain from Isaiah, and knows that the friends (the brothers) of the dead chose the inscription and will be beside Marius with a hand on his shoulder.

The idea that he should be the only one to survive is absurd: being impossible, it cannot be true. They did not exist, he only dreamt them; or they are alive and he will invite them to his wedding. This, too, he envisions. And when he cannot -- when the image of his friends at his marriage is wrong, Bahorel in a waistcoat black for mourning or red with something other than dye -- then he knows their paths have parted forever, lets them fade into air, and turns his mind to Cosette in her wedding dress.

**Author's Note:**

> \--Weeee, maybe this will provide the kick to my inertia and get me writing in fandom again! It's been on my mind.  
> \--Technically Brick-based, but obviously inspired by "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables."  
> \--I know it's popular to put the Amis in leadership roles in the government in AUs where the rebellion succeeds, but I don't think it's possible that it'd happen right away, if at all - hence Enjolras and Combeferre, in Marius's imagination, continuing to write and agitate.  
> \--I was thinking about Marius and Musichetta as two (named) associates of the group who survived, but as this ended up more a think-y piece than a do-y piece, they don't meet and reminisce in it.  
> \--If that 1848 fic I've been thinking about ever happens, it may lead on from this.  
> \--The quote on the headstone is deliberately anachronistic - it's from "The Red Carnation" by Louise Michel, the original Enjolras fangirl.


End file.
